


I Don't Mind If You Don't Mind

by Two_for_Slashing



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:05:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Two_for_Slashing/pseuds/Two_for_Slashing
Summary: What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom.  Until it doesn't.





	I Don't Mind If You Don't Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little humorous take on the whole Brady Skjei/Jimmy Vesey-shared-a bed-and-a-video-telling-the-story-got-released-to-the-Internet sensation. Obviously if you are a hockey player named Brady Skjei or Jimmy Vesey or a member of the New York Rangers or a friend or family member, etc., please hit the back button ASAP.
> 
> For those of you who stick around past that, enjoy!
> 
> Title taken from "Read My Mind" by The Killers, and a bunch of other songs featuring lyrics identical or totally close to those words.

At first Brady thought about composing a tweet. Then he thought about a mass text. A press release. A well-written and thoughtful, yet harshly honest piece for _The Player's Tribune_. Anything, really, that he could get out quickly before the video started getting around to the point it couldn't be contained.

His eyes were glued to his inbox, JT Miller's name dominating almost the first twenty slots. _Dude did you see this?_ accompanied by the link to the Broadway Blueshirts website. 

_Dude you guys slept together?_

_Who topped?_

_Is Easy Vesey huge? ;) Lol lol lol_

_Lol don't tell Nat I asked_

_Brad seriously don't tell Nat I asked ok_

Brady had no idea who had ever okayed the notion that "Brad" was an acceptable nickname for Brady, because it wasn't, and if his parents wanted to give him a normal name like Bradley than he'd be okay being Brad. JT didn't care, as he was all about the nicknames himself, along with being just an idiot with a bad personality in general, hence the whole Kreids-teaching-him-vocab thing.

Sometimes Brady wasn't sure who the more insufferable teammates were - the BC boys, the Wisco trio, or Jimmy and his Crimson pride? He was glad he was capable of quietly being a Minn kid who didn't get days’ worth of college face-off articles every time Johnny Gaudreau touched down in NYC. 

After deleting all of JT's emails and sending back one reassuring _No worries Millizie I won't tell your wife anything lol_ followed quickly by a _stop treating my email like it's text messaging thx_ , Brady knew he had one thing to do first before he set out on his mission of damage control. 

He found Jimmy lying on their couch, idly flipping through a copy of _The New York Times_. Brady fought back a smile; Jimmy was smart, there was no denying that what with him being able to speak Mandarin and the whole Harvard thing, but he liked to try to look as worldly as he thought he was and sometimes his attempts were amusing. Brady was just glad they didn't get copies of _The Harvard Crimson_ delivered to their apartment. He could just about get by with Jimmy's reminders of him being smarter-than-thou; the last thing they needed was more Harvard junk lying around.

"Can I talk to you for a sec?" 

Jimmy folded the _Times_ closed and sat up. "What's up?"

Brady dropped onto the other half of the couch, thumbing open his phone. He passed it to Jimmy, who peered closely at the screen. He wordlessly mouthed _oh_ and glanced over at Brady from underneath his Soxs cap cautiously. "Is it, um..."

"Yep. The whole thing."

The bombastic tone of the Broadway Blueshirts theme twinkled merrily out of his speakers as Jimmy pressed play. Brady's muscles involuntarily twitched. He waited with as much patience as he could muster as the video played through. The bedrooms. His laundry closet. Jimmy's not-closet laundry. Jimmy laughing as he told the story about coming home and not having a bed. Jimmy joking about it being a good "bonding" experience, A+ adjective selection used to his advantage. The kitchen with no garbage. The fridge with no food, except all the ice cream and JT's leftovers.

Finally silence fell softly upon the two teammates. Jimmy glanced back at Brady, his cheeks a faint red. Brady tried hard to unclench the muscles in his jaw but it was becoming a daunting task.

"They took forever to upload this," Jimmy began as he placed Brady's phone gently on their coffee table. No garbage but a coffee table, Brady marveled. What sort of adults _were_ they?

"And I didn't think they'd..." Jimmy paused again. He kept glancing at Brady, probably looking for a reaction, but Brady wasn't going to give him one outside of a steel-faced statuesque look of displeasure. Thank God for his strong, firmly chiseled yet expressive jawline.

"I can't believe they put the whole story in."

"It's funny and it's cute and it'll make us look even more hopeless than we are." Brady faced Jimmy's shy gaze straight-on. "Of _course_ they put it in. The editors live for this type of personal stuff."

A few months back, when the head of the Rangers PR had pulled Jimmy and Brady aside after a very positive response to the resurrection of Stepan Behind the Mic and asked the two boys to partake in a mini rookie showcase, they had agreed enthusiastically, happy for some extra exposure outside of post-game recaps. Then things had gone quiet for a few weeks, Derek was allowed to rush around the locker room with a microphone a few more times as they struggled to make Kreids seem more than dryly humorous and show that Mac was actually capable of speaking, and Brady had figured they had forgotten about the mini-showcase.

Then there had been a knock on their door just shy of Christmas break revealing their host and a camera-crew. Brady had blanched in embarrassment - a laundry closet? His mother was _definitely_ going to reach through the phone and kill him when she saw the video later - but Jimmy, ever the gentleman of Harvard, had graciously invited them in.

They weren't even lucky enough to have someone else carry around a microphone and ask them questions. _They_ were the hosts. _They_ were the ones who had to act competent and adult-like and like two role models for Ranger fans everywhere and not like two grown men who just about knew how to put their clothes on in the morning.

Brady shuddered at the thought of the word _men_. He couldn't vouch for Jimmy, but he woke up thinking of himself as still just a boy most days.

"Are you...mad?"

Jimmy had voiced the question just an octave above his usual talking volume, immediately regaining Brady's attention. Brady gazed at Jimmy, running through the question in his mind. _Was_ he mad?

At first, yes. Or maybe embarrassed was the better word to use. His anger had initially been at JT, who had been obnoxious enough to spam his email with junk, and then at the video, for keeping a story like the bed sharing incident in and leaving out other far more entertaining clips, like him and Jimmy making fun of JT's annual Christmas card or Brady showing off his extra gory pictures of his chin from when Kevin Hayes had kicked him in the face, marring what had been a perfect jawline, the asshole.

But he was embarrassed - embarrassed that a story that had already made him go tense when Jimmy was airing their dirty not-closet laundry to a camera crew that had now taken it to hundreds, eventually thousands, of New Yorkers, and then some. Embarrassed that now the whole team was going to rag them for it, when only a handful of their teammates had known about it in the first place.

And the one thing that embarrassed him more than anything, was that he had had Jimmy in his bed once, and had been unsuccessfully trying to get him back in it again.

Brady stood. "I'm not mad," he said, forcing a smile.

Jimmy gazed at Brady with a fixed intensity, an intensity that an intelligent person like Kreids would call “studious” and Brady would call “uncomforting” and under other circumstances “Just Jimmy Being Jimmy”. He was searching for something, a crack in Brady’s smile, but Brady wouldn’t break, not just yet.

“Okay,” Jimmy breathed after a moment, but he didn’t look like he believed himself.

Brady nodded. “Okay,” he muttered, and then he turned swiftly and rushed into the kitchen to get away from Jimmy and his gaze. He could hear the couch creak as Jimmy stood. Brady looked around the kitchen at the empty countertop and sink, heart pounding. He flung the fridge open. It was as empty as it had been all those months ago. He slammed it shut, hand curled tightly around the handle. 

He glanced over at Jimmy, who was leaning in the doorway, looking concerned. "We really need to get some food in here." Brady gestured at the fridge. Even the Tomas Tatar sauce had gone bad.

Jimmy tilted his head slowly. "We'll go shopping," he said, and Brady didn't appreciate his tone, how he was speaking to him like he was a child on the verge of a tantrum.

Which he might have been. Brady wasn't prone to cracking his cool façade, but it happened, especially on stressful nights and especially in situations exactly like this one.

"And the laundry." Brady gestured in the general direction of where the washer and dryer were, and his bedroom, and Jimmy's. "We need...baskets. And other stuff to help us stay organized."

Jimmy nodded, looking no less concerned than before. "Got it."

"And..." Brady paused. He was staring at his hand wrapped around the fridge handle, and he could see his muscles pulling tightly in his knuckles. He knew where he was going next. He didn't know if he should. But he had gone everywhere else, and there was only one place left to go.

That night had been long. They were already tired, and Jimmy was barely standing on his feet as he stumbled into Brady's room ranting about his missing bed. Brady hadn't even thought twice about sliding over - king beds were huge anyway, it wouldn't be a big deal. But he'd let the light linger on a little bit longer to watch soft shadows rest on Jimmy's peaceful face, to observe the occasional twitch of a limb or the soft murmur of something that barely sounded like words. 

Jimmy slept on his stomach with one arm wrapped around his pillow and the other hidden under the covers. His hair got tousled every time he shifted his head. He smiled randomly, just a sliver of that smirk he always wore, before his face evened out again.

Brady shouldn't have been watching him, but he was, and it was that night, in the dark after he had finally forced himself to turn off the light, that he knew he was fucked.

If Jimmy didn't move out after, Brady would take it as the smallest of victories. He really did like having him as a roommate. He could live by himself, but he could barely survive with another person, so it probably wasn't a good idea. And to keep his so-far good reputation intact, the Rangers would probably try to shove another rookie in with him, which means he'd have to live with Buch, and if Brady had no time for food shopping and proper laundry, there was definitely no time to learn Russian.

"I want you back in my bed."

And there it was, straight from his brain to his mouth, popping out with no warning. If he could have kicked himself in the head he would've, even though he already had enough facial injuries to last him for the rest of his career. Brady would at least be smart enough to not have his skates on.

Jimmy's eyes grew wide with shock. He opened his mouth and then closed it. He opened it again, shifting on his feet. Finally he looked at Brady, arms crossed. "Okay."

Brady blinked. He couldn't have said okay. That's not how this worked. "You don't want to move out?"

"Why would I move out?" Jimmy's concern had shifted into amusement, the corner of his mouth just pulling into a smirk. 

"Cause I want you to sleep with me?" Brady supplied. "Cause it would be funny to watch me fail at interacting with Buch?"

"What does Buch have to do with this?"

"Nothing." Besides, Buch would probably protest having to move in with Brady anyway and demand to live with Kreids and Hayes, who'd already have Jimmy kicking down their door to complete the Boston roomie trifecta trying to run away from Brady. "I was just thinking of who'd they'd try to make live with me after you'd go."

"They'd make you live by yourself." Jimmy's smirk was full-blown, and Brady found it maddeningly distracting, damnit. "But for the sake of the team I think it's better if I stayed here. Somebody needs to wash your closet laundry."

"I owe you for that."

"How about you make good on that sleeping together proposal?" Jimmy had stepped into the kitchen, inching closer to Brady, fully equipped with his smirk and a pink tinge slowly creeping up his neck.

Brady couldn't stop himself from smiling. "I think I can trade sex for clean clothes," he laughed. 

"And cuddles?"

"If you're into that."

"It took a lot for me not to totally invade your side of the bed that night."

"You totally should have invaded my side of the bed that night."

"If I knew you weren't going to murder me," Jimmy paused, just a step away from fully invading Brady's personal bubble. "I would have done a lot more a lot sooner."

Brady let go of his death grip on the fridge handle and stepped straight up to Jimmy. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders were relaxed, and despite the teasing smile, Brady could see the nervousness in his eyes.

He could see the want too.

Maybe that stupid video wasn't such a bad idea after all, Brady half thought to himself before he took Jimmy's face in his hands and smashed their mouths together.

And maybe this time, what happened in his bedroom, would _stay_ in his bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> You guys remember _The Social Network_? And the Winklevoss twins, and that one scene with the whole "Because we're gentlemen of _Harvard_ " quote? Yeah. I do, especially whenever Jimmy Vesey gets mentioned.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
